Only approved applicants can meet foster Labs available for adoption. If you have not applied please do so on our website http://www.midwestlabrescue.org/onlineadoption.htm After completing the application you will have to have a home visit by one of our volunteers. After they do your visit and submit a report to the MLRR board then we decide if you are approved to adopt or not. This process can vary in length depending on how many home visit volunteers are in your area and your flexibility in scheduling a meeting.

If you live outside of the Greater Chicago area but have been approved by another rescue, a lot of times they will share the home visit report with us that they have done and then you can be placed on our approved adopter list. Also, we sometimes allow out of area adoptions to applicants that provide us with photos of your yard and we do a phone call interview with you as well as detailed reference checks. This is on a case by case basis. You will have to come to the Chicago area to meet the foster Labs available for adoption.

Once you have been approved and are placed on our approved adopter list the wait time to receive a call about a Lab can vary. The less specific you are regarding sex, size, color, and age then the quicker you will be called about a Lab. Please keep your preferences as open as possible. If you receive a call about a dog and decide to pass on meeting it, it does not mean that you will be called about another dog right away - it might take several weeks before we have another potential match.

We have had a lot of problems lately with approved adopters either not responding or taking a long time to respond to the foster families when being called about a potential match. This holds up the process for everyone and every Lab. If you take three days to call back on a dog, then we have likely already moved on to the next family that is a good match. We typically wait between 24-48 hours before moving on, but if we were given an answer right away we can move on quicker and get that dog into his forever home sooner. So even if you are not interested in a dog, please take a few minutes to respond so that we can keep the process moving for all the Labs and all the other waiting families.

If you are an approved adopter, commenting on the dog does not ensure that you will have the opportunity to meet it. The dogs get posted to the website several days after they have been in foster care and most of the time the placement coordinator has already matched the dog with a potential family. That said, it might not work out, so please do comment on the dogs you are interested in, but realize that it may not always work out for you to meet them. Also, the placement coordinator goes by the date your home visit was completed, so if two parties are interested on a dog on the forum then the party who has been waiting longer would be placed on the list first to meet that dog.

Thank you and please comment here if you have any questions about the process. We are all working very hard behind the scenes to make the best matches possible between the Labs and their forever homes!

psflor - The Toy Story puppies won't be arriving until June 7th. If you haven't already, please complete an adoption application & state that you want to FOSTER TO ADOPT a puppy.

lizyson2 - if you haven't already, please go to our Facebook page. Often, transporters or foster homes will post pictures of their dogs on our Facebook page, kind of giving you a sneak peak at the dogs coming in to our care. The delay in posting them to the website is 1) the foster homes like to get to know the dog's personality a bit before they write the bio and 2) we're all volunteers and have jobs & families and pets of our own, so it may take an extra few days to get the pictures & posting up.

We are a newly approved family and are very interested in the puppies that are available this weekend. One of my questions is do you know have any of the puppies been around children we have two boys. We would love to learn more about Jack or Devon. Would we be able to bring the boys to meet the puppy this weekend?